Theodore Watts-Dunton was a vital figure in the literary world of Victorian London

Though largely forgotten now, the lawyer, critic and writer saved the
outrageous from themselves

Rescued: a detail from Rossetti’s portrait of the troubled poet Swinburne
Photo: ALAMY

By Allan Massie

4:00PM BST 24 May 2014

It is unlikely that the centenary of Theodore Watts-Dunton, who died on June 6 1914, will attract much notice, and not only because June 6 2014 is also the 70th anniversary of D-Day. Who, even tolerably well-read readers may ask, was Theodore Watts-Dunton? Well, for most of his life he was Theodore Watts, and when, to satisfy the terms of an inheritance, he changed his name, James Whistler, the artist, sent him a telegram reading, “Theodore, what’s dunton?”.

Actually, lawyer, friend of the Pre-Raphaelites, critic, reviewer, poet and author of one bestselling novel, Watts-Dunton was a considerable figure in the literary world of late-Victorian and Edwardian London. None of his poems was included in the Quiller-Couch edition of The Oxford Book of English Verse, but the novel, Aylwin, described by Professor Catherine Maxwell of London University as a strange mixture of gipsy lore, the occult, mesmerism and romanticism, sold 100,000 copies by the time of his death, and was still in print in the World’s Classics edition in 1950. There’s a Gnostic curse in it that suggests that the novel is on the fringe of Dan Brown territory (though better written). The heroine is a gipsy girl, an echo of Hugo’s Notre-Dame de Paris and Bizet’s Carmen, perhaps, though from Walter Scott’s Guy Mannering onwards, gipsies, representing freedom from the constraints and conventions of bourgeois life, feature in much Victorian poetry and fiction. Watts-Dunton was fascinated by the Roma, as we call them now, and learnt their language. Ford Madox Ford (of whom more later) rather unkindly said that his innumerable poems all seemed to be devoted to proving that he had once been kissed by a Romany girl. He also remarked that Watts-Dunton’s friends all thought his novel “bilge”. This is, of course, quite a common reaction when a literary grandee enjoys a popular success.

Inasmuch as Watts-Dunton is remembered today, it is as the person who rescued the poet Swinburne from alcoholism and took charge of his life. Swinburne himself is now out of fashion. Clive James recently wrote dismissively of him, but his poetry still makes a splendid sound, and poems such as “A Forsaken Garden” retain their magic. His delight in “the roses and raptures of vice” thrilled the Victorian young, all the more so because his first series of Poems and Ballads was met with a torrent of abuse from the guardians of public morality. Immensely prolific (for he made verses as easily as people now write blogs), sexually confused – reputedly because he had acquired a taste for flagellation at Eton – and more often seen in public drunk than sober, he seemed to be death-bound when Watts-Dunton took control of him.

He removed him to The Pines, Putney, where he lived with his sister, who acted as housekeeper, and they gradually weaned Swinburne from the bottle. The poet’s life changed. Instead of careering wildly round the bars and brothels of central London, he was now restricted to a daily toddle through suburban streets, where Max Beerbohm saw him patting babies on the head – he was very fond of babies. He lived there, still writing prolifically for 30 years, and the general consensus is that what he wrote in his Putney sobriety isn’t nearly as good as what he wrote in his years of dissipation. This is probably true, but then it is quite usual for poetic genius to ebb even though the desire and ability to make verses remain unabated. Few, after all, think late Wordsworth a patch on early Wordsworth.

When both Swinburne and Watts-Dunton were dead, the somewhat feline critic Edmund Gosse suggested that the poet had been kept more or less as a prisoner in Putney, with Watts-Dunton as his warder. This is the sort of snide accusation that is widely accepted. It may be that Swinburne did sometimes feel confined, but it is just as likely that the new regime suited him, and that he was more often grateful to Watts-Dunton than resentful of his care. Many recovering alcoholics are quite happy to be nannied, and if, on occasion, they feel nostalgia for their days of riot, at other times they look back on them with horror and fear.

Watts-Dunton, who looked after the business affairs of many of the Pre-Raphaelites and their associates – to their considerable advantage – was the trustee of Ford Madox Ford’s mother, and Ford recounted visits to The Pines, when dispatched there to extract a cheque from Watts-Dunton for his mother or himself. Ford’s memoirs are always engaging, if far from reliable. For instance, he tells us that Swinburne “sipped his glass of Worcester Sauce”, which is surely incredible; has anyone ever drunk this sauce by the glass? Yet the picture of the ménage is charming. The three, by now elderly, people were all rather deaf, so that, when the young Fordie was invited to stay for lunch, “the meals passed in ever deeper and deeper silence. Mr Swinburne ate, lost in his dreams, with, beside his plate, an enormous Persian cat to whom he fed alternate forkfuls of food. Mr Watts-Dunton gobbled his meats with voracity. The cooking was exquisite, the wines quite impeccable, though Mr Swinburne touched none.” And later, Swinburne would begin to talk about Greek drama “in long, wonderful monologues”.

Ford presents a picture of life at The Pines as comedy, and Watts-Dunton as a slightly absurd and self-important comic figure. Perhaps he was indeed that, a writer who thought himself more talented than posterity has judged him to have been. But Ford has the grace to add that “he did save ever so many of those outrageous poet-painters from the workhouse or the gaol and kept as many more on this side of delirium tremens…”.

That’s to say, he was a kind and dutiful man who did much good in the world, and this is reason enough to remember him on the centenary of his death. I am glad, too, that Ford concedes that it is probable that he was indeed kissed by “his gipsy maiden”, at least once anyway.